J.K. Rowling Explains the Reason Behind Her Pen Name

Everyone seems to have a story about dealing with sexism at one point or another in their lives, and celebrities like J.K. Rowling are no exception. The Harry Potter author recently sat down with CNN's Christiane Amanpour where she revealed a particularly infuriating experience: her publishers actually tried to hide her gender from readers. Yep, seriously.

While explaining why she writes under her initials, J.K. — whose real name is Joanne — revealed: "My publisher, who published Harry Potter, they said to me, we think this is a book that will appeal to boys and girls. And I said, oh, great. And they said, so could we use your initials?" The author went on to explain that the publishers were basically trying to "disguise" the fact that she was a woman simply because her book "might appeal" to all genders. But, as J.K. noted, that didn't last for long. "The book won an award and I got a big advance from America and I got a lot of publicity," she added. "So I was outed as a woman."

Despite the fact that she likes her initials, J.K. pointed out that she wouldn't have chosen them for that same reason. At the same time, she was just happy to be published that she was willing to write under any name she had to. "If they told me to call myself Rupert, I probably would have done to be honest with you," she told Christiane Amanpour, adding: "But now, I actually quite like having a pen name, because I feel that's...like an identity and then in private life, I'm Jo Murray. And it feels like quite a nice separation." Ultimately, it seems as though J.K. has come to a good place with her pen name and she has a pretty solid outlook. But, for the record, it shouldn't matter what her gender is; we should be able to celebrate the magical world of Harry Potter no matter what.